


Indefinite

by bearonthecouch



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Canon-Typical Racism, Conversations, Diary/Journal (kinda), Gen, Implied/Referenced Genocide, Implied/Referenced Torture of a Minor, Ishval Civil War, Snippets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-24
Updated: 2019-02-24
Packaged: 2019-11-04 15:21:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,235
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17900648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bearonthecouch/pseuds/bearonthecouch
Summary: Maes tells himself a lot of things.#HyuroiWeek Day 1: Prompt: Art of War





	Indefinite

**Author's Note:**

> In war you lose your sense of the definite, hence your sense of truth itself, and therefore it's safe to say that in a true war story nothing is ever absolutely true. - Tim O'Brien

**February 23, 1907**

They leave home.  
  
Maes rides on a train and falls asleep with the rolling of the wheels. When he wakes up, he's in Ishval.

 

 

**August 5, 1907**

Maes sorts through the inventory collected from an Ishvalan weapons cache they'd discovered in a school earlier that day. The mission had disgusted Hughes, and he'd nearly gotten his ass up on charges when he stood toe-to-toe with the major in charge of the sector and demanded that they wait until the children were clear of the building before they charged in. They didn't wait. But at least they didn't just blow the place up and sort out the wreckage later, punishing the innocent along with the guilty.

Schoolkids screamed when they saw soldiers with guns, but at least none of them were firing back.

_In a few months, in a year, Maes would only be able to grasp at mercy or uncertainty through hazy half-remembered flashes of things that might have happened, a long time ago, in a different war. But in the beginning, they still believed in good guys and bad guys._

Maes watches the stacks of guns and ammo and grenades pile up. Filed away serial numbers, all of them, but they are of Auregonian make. At least most of them are. Some of them are Amestrian, though, military standard. Picked up from the bodies of the fallen, most likely. Maes picks up one of the guns, flips it over in his hand, wonders who it came from, whether that body had been found and shipped home in a box, or if it was simply one of the many gone MIA, giving no one anywhere any sense of closure.

 

 

**October 19, 1907**

The desert is full of Amestrian soldiers who are lonely and overwhelmed and terrified, more and more of them flood into the war zone every year, every month, every _day_. Hughes has been here for less than a year, and he already counts as a veteran. And every single one of these men in uniform – the same uniform he's wearing even though it's grimy and sweat-soaked and sticky with grit and sand – is scared for his own life. But for him it's worse; it is for all of Intelligence. People are dying because of _their_ bad decisions, _their_ inability to see what's coming until it's too late. These are innocent kids stepping into unseen ambushes that it's _his fucking job_ to see. And worse than that, the war is slipping out of their control, spreading, swallowing more of Amestris's Eastern region with every backdated report Central's brass sends their way.

“Fuck!” Hughes yells, getting up from the wireless and throwing his headset at the nearest wall. Which is canvas, obviously, and the earphones land in the sand anyway, so there's not even a satisfactory clatter. “Fuck,” he repeats, more softly, as he slumps into his chair and spreads out his map of the conflict zone. It seems that the more Command wants to pretend that Ishval and Amestris aren't the same thing, the more this goddamned war forces them to overlap. The border's been in flux since Ishval stopped being a group of people and became a place; there technically _isn't_ a border, since Ishval was officially annexed into Amestris decades ago. They're fighting against themselves. Technically.

But the Ishvalans are pushing out of their traditional homeland and attacking Amestrian targets outright, now. Resembool. Fuck. That's nowhere _near_ the nonexistent border. And since when are the Ishvalans bold enough to go after soft targets? They don't even have an _army_. Just these... warrior-priests, whatever they are. They're dangerous as hell, is what they are, every one of them as deadly as a spec. ops squad, and the Amestrians are trying to fight against them on their home ground. Hughes has been here for eight months, and he isn't anywhere close to even finding out how many of them there are.

“Lieutenant?” He looks up, to see one of the radio techs frowning curiously at him. The woman looks torn between wanting to reprimand him for damaging her equipment and deferring to him as a senior officer. Hughes sighs, feeling reprimanded enough by the shallow dip in the sand caused by the awkward landing of the thrown earphones. He walks the few steps it takes to pick them up, and starts brushing off the grainy sand and grit as best he can.

“Sorry,” he mutters, as he shoves the headset back into the sergeant's hand.

“It's no problem, sir,” she says quietly. She sets the headset back down onto the rickety table, for him to plug back in or not, as he desires. He plugs it in. Of course he does. It's his job to gather information.

It's not like the Ishvalans chatter on the radio: they don't even have any proper infrastructure beyond a few stolen wireless kits, which they use to keep track of Amestrian strength and movements rather than to make their own plans. Hughes's task force tries to flood the enemy with false information, static to cloud the signal, and they change encryption as often as they can. But still, the Ishvalans are smarter than Amestrian Leadership wants to admit. It's easy to see them as primitive and backward, with their superstitious belief in some ultimate creator, and their reluctance to accept both alchemy and many recent technological advances.

Hughes secretly wonders, though: the supposedly superior Amestrian force is so often caught flat-footed, hemmed in by their own inflexible supply lines. Even the units that are able to pack up and move, like the MASH teams and his own intelligence squad, are required to move in predictable ways, within sight-line of their own communications networks and along terrain that won't obstruct their vehicles.

“Lieutenant Hughes.”

Maes gets to his feet, saluting before he's even fully standing. “Captain. Sir.”

“I'm sending you and the men into the city. This recent... situation... is concerning.”

 _I'll say_ , Maes thinks, but he manages to keep from rolling his eyes or saying anything out loud. “You really think we'll turn anything up?” he asks carefully.

“They're recruiting among the civilians. Reports from Resembool indicate the complete _absence_ of known Ishvalan insurgents in the area.”

Hughes frowns. “You think they're getting help? From _our_ people?” He isn't quite sure what he means when he says that: our people, military? Or just... our people, Amestrian? There are plenty of men, women, and children of Ishvalan blood concentrated in the Eastern region. Are they supposed to declare them all enemies, now?

Intelligence – and therefore High Command – has known for a while that the Ishvalan warriors are being supplied by Auregonian arms manufacturers; the Ishvalans' aversion to tech apparently does not extend all the way to machine guns and long-range rifles. But a new enemy colluding with an old one is hardly the same as that same new enemy purposely stirring up a war within Amestrian borders. The religious warrior caste is one thing, an extreme faction. But if Ishvalan civilians are being turned against the Amestrian civilians they once co-existed with, then.... then Hughes's military might be fucked. As of now, the mathematical models still confirm that the Amestrian forces outnumber and outgun the Ishvalan enemy. But if civilians _become_ the enemy... then they're surrounded on all sides, a long way from home.

Hughes swallows hard and tries to ignore the unsettled churning in his gut as he accepts his orders.

Hughes keeps the known map of Ishval in his head, memorized as much as it can be when so much of it changes so fast. The largest city they know about is also the closest to the unquestionably Amestrian towns of the Eastern region. The border is permeable, with Amestrians and Ishvalans each living on both sides of the undrawn line, but in this city, the two racial groups mix together freely in a way that doesn't happen anywhere else. The place has no real name. Or it has too many names, actually: it shares its name with the region as a whole to most Amestrians, and has some other name in written Ishvalan, and is usually just referred to as “the city” in the kind of spoken Ishvalan that the Amestrians are allowed to overhear.

It's not a city compared to Central, or even East. But it's a city enough for Maes to feel paranoid; like he's being watched by too many people, like there are too many tangled alleyways, and narrow paths between market stalls, and civilian cars and military trucks all moving in ways he can't predict. He isn't sure of the exits. He doesn't know who to trust. The fact that more than half the people within his range of hearing are speaking a language he doesn't understand does not help matters. He keeps his ears open, but he highly doubts the Ishvalan terrorists will be discussing their plans openly on the street, and even if they were stupid enough to do so, they certainly wouldn't be doing it in Maes's language.

The Amestrian Military's presence here grows more and more obvious, more oppressive even, every time Hughes returns. He doesn't wear a uniform while on surveillance missions, and there are almost more Amestrians here than Ishvalans, so it's not like he stands out. But even so, the Amestrians here whisper about Ishvalan savages out in the deserts, young men pour into the recruiting stations, and racial violence grows more and more common. The Ishvalans shout in both their language and that of their conquerors that the Amestrians are murderers and thieves, that their entire culture is nothing less than an abomination against God. They're drawing lines that never used to exist: us versus them.

It'd be one thing if the war took place somewhere else, outside the city. But the city is the center of the war. Improvised explosives destroy Amestrian vehicles – both civilian and military – on roads that should have been cleared. Amestrian soldiers retaliate against Ishvalan houses of worship. The long-established curfew gives way to full-on martial law. Ishval is occupied territory, now. Maes wishes it were enough to help him feel safe.

 

 

**October 20, 1907**

“I hate this,” Hughes mutters to the Ishvalan soldier who serves as their team's translator. Like most Ishvalans, Second Lieutenant Amman Kouri grew up literally straddling two cultures; even given the fuzzy nature of the division between Amestrian and Ishvalan when it came to land rights and citizenship, the town where he grew up was unquestionably on the Amestrian side of the map. His white hair and red eyes were still common enough that he never felt like he didn't belong. And when the Ishvalan region exploded into riots that evolved into war, Amestrian Military Intelligence was desperate for men who spoke the language and understood the people and the land. An oath of allegiance was all it took for Kouri to be accepted among them.

Hughes trusts Kouri with his life, which is a damned good thing given that they've been under fire together more than once.

“This isn't your fault,” Kouri says simply. “It's not mine, either. It's Central's job to pay attention to the big picture. East Command's supposed to be watching the border. Our job is keeping our men in the field alive.”

“ _Our job_ is to keep _them_ on _this side_ of the border. What the fuck are your people thinking, blowing up a train station?”

“They're not my people,” Kouri replies instinctively. But after a moment, he adds, more softly: “But if they were, they might be thinking that _your_ people gunned down an innocent child six years ago.”

Hughes holds his breath, and in his coat pocket, his fingers crumple a couple of sheets of paper he'd stuffed in there this morning: a letter from Gracia he would love to get a chance to read again.

“You think the captain's right? That they're getting help from civilians?”

Kouri shrugs. His parents sold fruit and sweets and coffee from a little cart near the train station. It's not like he grew up studying scripture. He and Hughes are more alike than they are different, when it comes to background knowledge. But he's said enough prayers to Ishvala (still does, when no one is watching, even if it means slipping off to the latrine to do it) to know that launching an attack against a defenseless innocent is a cowardly act, spit upon by God. A war doesn't last for six years without motives being twisted by lies and tangled in smokescreens.

“The priests wouldn't leave the Holy Land,” he points out. “So they must be allying themselves with someone.”

Maes grunts acknowledgement and returns to the radio.

 

 

**April 15, 1904**

_“Hughes.”_

_Maes groaned, rolled over onto his back, and refused to open his eyes. Everything hurt and despite his attempt to shower, he knew there was mud still speckling his skin, after being caked on in thick layers as he crawled on his belly across a no-man's-land lit up by flashes of lightning arcing through the sky._

_The thunder still rumbled outside their cinderblock walls. Hughes's heart still raced, and there was an unsettling almost-sickness in his stomach. He could still feel the weight of the gun in his hands._

_His mattress sank underneath him as Mustang's weight pressed it down. Hughes did finally open his eyes, and he managed to sit up, shifting to give Roy space on the narrow bunk. The younger boy was on hands and knees, literally crawling into bed with Hughes, and he frowned at his roommate with obvious worry. Their eyes met, and Maes tried to get some kind of read on Roy's response to the grueling, days-long training exercise they'd just been through._

_“It felt kinda real, didn't it?” he asked carefully. Roy nodded, settling cross-legged at the foot of Hughes's bed._

_Their ears still rang with the sounds of the explosive shells detonated only paces away from the shallow trench they'd huddled in. Multi-colored bruises blossomed over Mustang's pale flesh, marking the impact sites of training bullets that hit with punishing force. The pain made him dizzy for several minutes after each shot. He spread his fingers over the wound just above his right hip. There was another one covering most of his upper left arm. “If it was real, I'd be dead,” he whispered._

_And the fear in his eyes when looked up at Maes was definitely real._

_Hughes chewed on his lower lip, and shook his head against the thought. “Maybe not,” he finally managed to say. “It's not like...” He stopped talking, and just ran his fingers across Roy's bare chest, above the heart._

_Roy nodded his understanding._

_This nightmarish simulation they'd just struggled through was still non-lethal._

_But there isn't that much longer til they'll be doing this for real._

 

 

**January 3, 1908**

“Hughes.”

Eyes open, hand on his gun, fully awake and ready to fight, within a second or two. Getting to his feet takes a second longer. Maes doesn't hear any gunfire or shelling, he doesn't even hear any voices, except for Kouri's, which is serious but not strained or panicked. So they're not being attacked. He takes a calming breath and lets his heartbeat slow. “My watch?” he asks quietly, and the Ishvalan nods.

But even though the man should be catching as much rack time as he can before the inevitable next crisis, he seems reluctant to settle down and close his eyes. Not that Hughes can blame him, given how unsettled his few hours of rest had been. Mustang's the one who talks in his sleep, not him, but he wouldn't be surprised to find out he'd been muttering Roy's name. He still feels a strained and desperate longing, the ghost presence of Roy's hands on him in the dark.

His fingers skip over the pages-long letter in his pocket. He writes to Gracia and dreams about Roy. What the fuck is wrong with him?

“Hey, Kouri,” Hughes asks, as he does his best to scrub his face with a dry cloth pulled out of his bag. He runs his tongue over grimy teeth and frowns. “You got a girl back home?”

Kouri sits cross-legged on the pile of blankets that serves as their makeshift bed, almost a nest. In the hellish heat of this miserable excuse for a country – and why the _fuck_ Amestris is so desperate to hold onto this land, Maes has no idea – actually crawling under the blankets is a good way to get heat stroke and die, at least during the daylight hours. They're more useful as a soft-ish place to land, less depressing than sleeping on a bare concrete floor.

Kouri shakes his head, even as he lays down and starts the breathing exercise Maes has seen him use before – it's supposed to help focus and calm the mind, apparently. Hughes supposes he can't be opposed to anything that might help any of them sleep a little better. He watches the Ishvalan drift off, rolling onto his stomach with one arm cradling his head and his other sprawled out in front of him. As Kouri's sporadic soft snores fill the room, Hughes sits alone with his thoughts. He keeps watch out of the small window, heavily stained with dirt and soot and general grime. There's not much to see but a stone patio boxed in by a four-foot-tall iron-work fence, and a strip of the alleyway beyond. Maes's first thought is that the view wouldn't look out of place in Central. It makes it all the more unsettling to think about the patrols of Amestrian soldiers sweeping through the streets, most of them more than willing to shoot first and ask questions later, if at all.

 

 

**March 11, 1908**

“It's not like the Ishvalans are _walking_. They have cars, trucks, and trains, same as we do.”

“They do not have trains.”

“Not in the desert. But they're attacking Amestrian train stations. Ergo: they have trains.”

“You think they're trying to cut off our access to their land?”

Maes shrugs. “Honestly, I think we're as entrenched as it's possible to get. Are they trying to make it more difficult for us to call in reinforcements, though? I mean... wouldn't you?”

“It doesn't make sense. They're spreading themselves so thin.”

“And so are we, trying to chase them.”

 

 

**May 9, 1908**

“They're getting help from more than just Aurego.”

“What do you mean?”

“Look at the _map_ ,” Hughes insists. “We waited too long to press the attack. We think this is a clean up action?” He shakes his head. “No. They've been fleeing into the deep deserts for nearly the entire war. And Xing must be looking the other way.”

“At least Aurego won't shelter the enemy themselves.”

“They provide weapons to the Ishvalans, yet try to play both sides?”

“The last thing we can afford is an active war with Aurego.”

 

 

**June 1, 1908**

“The Fuhrer's lost his mind. Those people weren't traitors – they were our translators and informants! Now we're blind _and_ deaf.”

“I don't think that matters anymore,” Abrams says quietly.

Maes frowns. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“Well, we're not really taking prisoners anymore.”

Maes takes a long drink out of his canteen and tries not to think about that.

 

 

**June 22, 1908**

The Ishvalans have targeted officers for entire war. Of course they'll target the alchemists.

Maes tells himself he isn't worried.

Maes tells himself a lot of things.

 

 

**July 23, 1908**

Maes Hughes is deep in the desert, in a command tent surrounded by men who more than outrank him, they overwhelm him.

“Captain?” General Fessler asks.

Maes swallows hard, and glances up from the map only as much as he has to. The map's carved into regions now: Kanda, Gunja, Dahlia. “There,” he says, pointing to the eastern edge. “That's gotta be where they're holed up. There are too many conflicting reports for them to actually be in any of the populated areas.”

Fessler stares at the map for a long minute, then shakes his head. “That won't do.”

“Sir?”

“You're _guessing_ , Captain. We won't waste time on a guess.”

Maes scowls and says nothing. The generals are talking over him now, not even seeing him. He doesn't agree with their preconceptions, so in their eyes, he isn't even there.

It's his birthday.

 

 **September 2, 1908**  
  
"Maes," Roy begs, as he claws for some kind of certainty and sinks under the weight of his self-loathing. "Can you tell me why you fight?"

"It's simple. I don't want to die. The reasons are always simple."

 

**December 12, 1908**

“Look at you, playing Good Cop, Hughes.”

“Shut up. This kid is not a terrorist. For _fuck's_ sake.”

He shoves his way past the sorry excuse for a ranking officer and steps into the little cell.

The boy is crying. He can't be older than twelve or thirteen, but the hatred visible in his eyes, even through the tears and the fear, is chilling. His arms are bound painfully behind his back, and he's naked, shaking in the cold of the desert night. There's no hiding the bruises and blood from the rough treatment he'd already endured before Hughes got here. Several of his fingers are broken. There are signs of worse abuses. Maes feels sick.

He stands just on the inside of the bars and says, softly: “I can help you.” He doesn't know why he says it. They both know it's a lie. The best Maes can hope to give this boy is a quick death. “Just tell me what I need to know.”

The boy says nothing. Maes growls and slams his fist against the stone wall in frustration, but the boy doesn't so much as jump, and then Maes is yanking the chain attached to the wall and strung through the cuffs at the boy's wrists. The chain jerks the boy's body backward, dragging him a few feet across the rough floor. He doesn't even flinch. Maes does. He never imagined when he became an officer that he'd be using his authority to torture children. “Please,” he begs. “Just give me _something_.”

The boy spits, and a glob of his bloody saliva lands just under Hughes' eye. He wipes his cheek and snarls, disgusted, but he resists the obvious bait. The boy certainly expects physical punishment, but Hughes is calmer than that, more patient. And he's tired. Exhausted. And he hates who he's become, in this godforsaken desert.

“Please,” he says again, more softly.

And after a moment, the boy blinks, frowns. Looks up at Hughes with wide eyes. “Please?” he repeats.

Maes' chest tightens. It hurts to breathe. He forces out a long, slow breath and then sits down on the floor next to the kid. He pulls off his jacket and drapes it over the boy. He doesn't have the key to undo the cuffs, so there isn't much else he can do.

They sit there in the silence that is broken only by their harsh and ragged breathing. Maes stops asking questions. “I'm sorry,” he whispers, and what the _fuck_ is he apologizing for? What happened to this boy, or what's happening to his country, his family, the only home he's ever known. What's about to happen.

It scares Hughes that this child's death feels inevitable.

It terrifies him that he doesn't even question it anymore.

Not out loud.

 

 

**March 16, 1909**

Maes watches the Fuhrer up on his pedestal and scowls. His hands are curled into tight fists. His stomach is twisted into a hard knot of anger. “Now we know. We really are as expendable as garbage to them.” He wants to spit and snarl, but his voice is calm and quiet. Quiet enough that only Roy can hear.

Roy nods. Unlike Maes, whose attention is drawn to King Bradley and can't be pulled away, Roy barely seems to notice the Commander in Chief. His eyes skip over the man and look over the other soldiers, standing in small groups of two or three. This morning, they were marched out in inspection lines, but discipline has loosened as the day stretches out and the deadly desert heat beats down on all of them. It didn't take Maes long to find Roy.

He knows Mustang has easily locked onto every word of Bradley's speech, whether it looks like he's paying attention or not. And there is fire in his eyes, when he finally gets Hughes to look at him.  
  
“The power of one man doesn't amount to much,” he agrees. “But that doesn't matter.” Before Maes can open his mouth to ask what the hell that's supposed to mean, Roy continues. “With what little strength I have, I'll do whatever it takes to protect the people I love. And in turn, they'll protect the ones they love. It seems like the least we tiny insignificant humans can do for each another.”

Maes nods, but he's still watching the Fuhrer and wheels are spinning in his head, and he half-opens his mouth to ask Roy if he's actually saying what he thinks he's saying, but he just narrows his eyes instead, and Roy nods, like this is no big deal.

Maes breathes slowly, in and out. And he nods too.

 

 

**March 25, 1909**

Maes rides on a train and falls asleep with the rolling of the wheels.

They go home.

 

**Author's Note:**

> find me on [tumblr](https://bearonthecouch.tumblr.com/)


End file.
